Friday, January 25, 2013

Obama’s Peace

Should President Barack Obama return his Nobel Peace Prize?
That’s the sobering question posed in a stunningly serious satire posted on the
online humor site TFE.

“Thorbjorn Jagland, chairman of the Nobel Peace Prize
Committee, said today that President Obama ‘really ought to consider’ returning
his Nobel Peace Prize Medal immediately, including the ‘really nice’ case it
came in,” the thought-provoking piece by Tony Hendra, a former National Lampoon
editor, began.

“Jagland, flanked by the other four members of the
Committee, said they’d never before asked for the return of a Peace Prize,
‘even from a damnable war-criminal like Kissinger,’ but that the 10% drawdown
in US troops in Afghanistan the President announced last week capped a period
of ‘non-Peace-Prize-winner-type behavior’ in 2011. ‘Guantanamo’s still open. There's bombing Libya. There's
blowing bin Laden away rather than putting him on trial. Now a few US troops go home, but the US will be occupying Afghanistan until 2014 and beyond.
Don’t even get me started on Yemen!’

“The Committee awarded Obama the coveted prize in 2009 after
he made a series of speeches in the first months of his presidency, which
convinced the Peace Prize Committee that he was: ‘creating a new climate of...multilateral
diplomacy...an emphasis on the role of the United Nations...of dialogue and
negotiations as instruments for resolving international conflicts...and a
vision of world free of nuclear arms.’”

In a final twist that
cuts knife-edge close to the reality of Obama’s unrelenting lethal actions
chasing the ghost of bin Laden around the world, the TFE piece concludes: “The
White House had no comment. It later announced an aggressive new covert CIA
initiative to identify and apprehend Al Qaeda operatives in Scandinavia.”

Indeed, what are peaceful folks around the world to make of
an American president who gives soaring speeches promoting peaceful actions and
secretly issues orders for drone missile attacks on homes and vehicles in
Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere that may or may not contain people on a White
House-approved “kill list”—but which in many cases kill children and other
bystanders, according to a report by researchers at Stanford and New York University
law schools.

Can you imagine the outrage that would rise across America
if some other country sent in drones to blow up targeted enemies strolling amid
Times Square crowds, stuck in Los Angeles traffic and hanging out in suburban
homes.

“A new report on targeted killing by C.I.A. drones in Pakistan’s
tribal area concludes that the strikes have killed more civilians than American
officials have acknowledged, alienated Pakistani public opinion and set a
dangerous precedent under international law,” The New York Times reported last
September.

“The report, by human rights researchers at the Stanford and
New York University law schools, urges the United States to ‘conduct a
fundamental re-evaluation of current targeted killing practices’ including ‘short-
and long-term costs and benefits.’ It also calls on the administration to make
public still-secret legal opinions justifying the strikes.”

Needless to say, Obama’s secret drone missile warfare opinions
and orders were not addressed in his reelection inaugural speech on Monday. Instead,
as American troops continued to kill and die in Afghanistan (and kill themselves in
the war zone and at home) at a rate exceeding the carnage during the Bush
administration, Obama gave another soaring paean to peace:

“We, the people, still believe that enduring security and
lasting peace do not require perpetual war. Our brave men and women in
uniform, tempered by the flames of battle, are unmatched in skill and
courage. Our citizens, seared by the memory of those we have lost, know
too well the price that is paid for liberty. The knowledge of their
sacrifice will keep us forever vigilant against those who would do us
harm. But we are also heirs to those who won the peace and not just the
war, who turned sworn enemies into the surest of friends, and we must carry
those lessons into this time as well.

“We will defend our people and uphold our values through
strength of arms and rule of law. We will show the courage to try and
resolve our differences with other nations peacefully - not because we are
naïve about the dangers we face, but because engagement can more durably lift
suspicion and fear. America
will remain the anchor of strong alliances in every corner of the globe; and we
will renew those institutions that extend our capacity to manage crisis abroad,
for no one has a greater stake in a peaceful world than its most powerful
nation. We will support democracy from Asia to Africa; from the Americas to the Middle East,
because our interests and our conscience compel us to act on behalf of those
who long for freedom. And we must be a source of hope to the poor, the
sick, the marginalized, the victims of prejudice - not out of mere charity, but
because peace in our time requires the constant advance of those principles
that our common creed describes: tolerance and opportunity; human dignity
and justice.”

That is the vision the Nobel Peace Prize committee honored
at the beginning of Obama’s first term in office. Satire aside, that award really
ought to be rescinded if Obama continues waging secretive, morally obtuse war
operations in his second term.

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About Me

I'm a poet, journalist, author and editor of several books, including A Citizen's Guide to Grassroots Campaigns, Earth Songs: New and Selected Poems, and Winning Hearts & Minds: War Poems by Vietnam Veterans. I also teach writing workshops and college journalism courses. You can read more about my life at www.janbarry.net.